City Colleges Exec Wins A Promotion

Dispute Nearly Led To Suspension

December 30, 1990|By Carol Jouzaitis.

City Colleges of Chicago promoted an administrator to oversee its extensive program for students in the military just eight months after Chancellor Nelvia Brady recommended his temporary suspension without pay for submitting forged student records.

The administrator, Robert Myers, a division director, was promoted Nov. 2 to acting director of all City Colleges military programs, which serve more than 40,000 students at more than 200 locations around the world.

Internal City Colleges documents show that Brady informed Myers via letter on March 14 that he would be suspended from his $40,000-a-year job for five days without pay.

Brady said in the letter that she was disciplining Myers ``because you are accountable for test results which were transmitted from your office to City-Wide College and subsequently revealed to be fabricated.

suspension was dropped several weeks later without a hearing because the charges could not be substantiated.

Myers, 59, reached by telephone in Norfolk, Va., where he is based, said his proposed suspension ``is a dead issue. . . . I`m sure the guilty parties are no longer employed.``

City Colleges is one of the nation`s largest providers of post-secondary education programs to the Army, Air Force and Navy, with students in such far- flung locations as Greenland, the Sinai desert, Germany, Italy and Cuba. Students aboard ships or in other remote locations take videotaped courses.

The military program accounts for one-third of the system`s total enrollment of about 120,000. City Colleges grosses more than $6 million in annual tuition revenues from the military. The program earned a $197,159 profit in fiscal 1990, according to a new consultant`s report by the Foster Group of Chicago.

Myers replaced the City Colleges vice president for military programs, Nenad Matich, who was fired Nov. 2, the same day Myers was promoted.

Matich said he was the person who told college officials that fraudulent records had been submitted to the colleges` registrar on behalf of several military students. Matich has contested his firing.

To obtain diplomas, Illinois law and City Colleges require all students to pass an examination on the U.S. and state Constitutions, unless they can show they have completed certain political science or history courses.

Eygenhuysen, the City Colleges attorney, said the colleges hadn`t enforced the requirement uniformly throughout the military programs for six years before Matich took over the department in 1988, because college officials felt it wasn`t applicable to out-of-state students. Matich disagreed with that reasoning and reinstituted the requirement.

In early 1989, Matich`s office advised Myers and his employees that the Constitution exam requirement would be enforced for all military students.

In January, Matich and college registrar officials began investigating student records after learning that one graduate of the Norfolk-based military program had not taken the exam.

The student`s record showed he had taken the test and passed it at his base in Guatanamo Bay, Cuba, in December 1989. An examination of his military record showed, however, that he wasn`t even in Cuba at the time because he had been transferred from Guatanamo a month earlier.

A further inquiry conducted by college officials in March turned up four other students who had signed statements that they never took the exam, though the records submitted from Myers` office on their behalf showed they had.

The records had been submitted in late 1989 to the City Colleges registrar by employees in Myers` office, including his wife, Marion Myers, as proof that the students had taken the Constitution exam.

The records consisted of Constitution test answer sheets and forms signed by Marion Myers as to the dates the tests were supposedly administered. Marion Myers is still employed by the colleges.

Matich has alleged that the student answer sheets and forms were forged to meet graduation requirements. After the five cases were discovered, Brady issued the suspension and informed Myers of his right to a hearing to contest the action.

City College officials said last week that the documentation Matich provided was, at best, evidence ``of sloppy record keeping`` and noted that it would have been costly for the colleges to fly Myers and various witnesses to Chicago from Norfolk for a hearing.

Chancellor Brady, who is on medical leave, declined to comment on the matter and referred questions to Robert Rogers, City Colleges` chief financial officer.

Rogers said the colleges process thousands of student records and that errors inevitably occur. He said Eygenhuysen`s staff, after looking into the matter, recommended that Myers` suspension be dropped. Rogers said he was not aware of any further investigation into the alleged forgeries.